


I Feel That This Is Just Goodbye For Now

by eboleiul



Series: These Lives He Owes [3]
Category: Heroes (TV), Heroes Reborn (TV)
Genre: F/M, Nathan POV, Sylaire - Freeform, cliffhanger? cliffhanger, much less about romantic relationships, taking a backseat to Nathan, who is a Nakamura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-04 08:45:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6650866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eboleiul/pseuds/eboleiul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathan discovers his "biological father" is not who he believes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Feel That This Is Just Goodbye For Now

**Author's Note:**

> Another special thanks to [AClockworkLove](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AClockworkLove/pseuds/AClockworkLove) for beta reading this hot mess. Thanks for reading :D

How did regular teens think that a car was freedom? For a solid three months, all Nathan had to do was put a hand to his chest and think of home and he was there with a pull and a tug and a pop. If he wanted to go to work, he’d be in the lot out back in an instant. If he wanted to be at Emily’s house, he could be in her yard without blinking. That was freedom. Parental restrictions weren't really in the mix, either. Anne, his mom, had taken to leaving notes if she needed him to stay or grab something before he came home for the night. His "mom"... that had gotten so much more complex with Claire being alive. It hadn't been Claire's choice to give him up, but that didn't change the fact that Anne had been the only mother he knew up to that point.

It was a scribbled sticky note left by Anne that read: “Grab milk, pls :),” which put Nathan in the same grocery store as his father. Or, more accurately, the guy that Claire said was his father. Nathan had his doubts; there was something the man was holding back. His overt trench coat hid more than the tarot cards.

Nathan’s biological father was standing in front of the milk case with a dead-eyed sort of intensity that had the teen reaching out to tap his shoulder and ask, “Are you okay?”

He was picking himself up off the floor a moment later, with the help of the man who he had startled into a… psychic push of some sort.

          “I’m so sorry, Nathan,” the man was saying, and he genuinely sounded distressed, “I’m sorry. If I had realized it was you, I would have never…”

          “I’m okay,” Nathan replied a little breathlessly. Maybe he was just a small bit winded from landing against a Coke display. Taking stock, Nathan made sure what he was saying was true, and it dawned on him: the man in the trench coat had flung him like a rag-doll without touching him. How was that possible? “How did you do that? I thought you had regenerative powers, like Claire?” Wasn't that how he brought Claire and Noah back?

The look on his “father’s” face surprised Nathan. He didn’t look mad; he looked caught.

The man in the trench coat reached out a hand to one of Nathan’s arms and was pulling him into a different aisle, out of the way before there was any sort of answer thrown into the mix. He let go of Nathan when they were out of sight, but not before Nathan had glared at the man. “What are you—?”

Nathan didn’t continue because the man in front of him seemed to warp until he had been replaced. The new man was somewhat dark in appearance, dark hair, dark eyes, and he seemed like he was all eyebrows. If that man hadn’t given him a look like he was begging Nathan to stay quiet, the latter would have started yelling for help. How often did a person transfigure themselves, Evo or not? “I need you to listen, Nathan,” the shape-shifter said, “Because this is going to sound a little convoluted...”

The ensuing tale was one that was, frankly, a little hard to stomach.

          “Go back to the part where you're a serial killer and you cut open my mother’s head to get her power--?” Nathan worked, words more than a bit indicting, “And then you followed her around for a few years and used her power—your blood—to bring her back to life…?”

          “Well, yeah. It’s not simple.”

          "And she's okay with this? She knows who you are?"

          "Of course she does. You were paying attention to the part when I said I had changed? The time I spent with your..." Dark eyebrows furrowed as the man thought hard, "I guess he is your great-uncle... Peter Petrelli, locked with him in a sort of limbo, changed me."

Nathan gave the man a highly dubious look, but he still had a few burning questions, beginning with: "And you're not really my biological father?"

          "No," he said, though it had a ring to it like the man lamented the fact. Nathan must have had a irritated look on his face because the man continued, "I watched Claire. I saw her meet the..." It was obvious to Nathan that the man had to rethink what he was going to say. "Your biological father. I kept up with them until he disappeared, after... Claire got pregnant. I wasn't doing it to be creepy. There were a lot of people after Claire back then. How could I know he wasn't another hitman after her?"

          "So, what does that make you to her now, if she knows? How'd you convince her to let you be part of... this?" Nathan asked, the story not having included how this man... this killer, came to be pretending to be his biological father. It was a slight blow that he still didn't know the man who shared half his genes. Slight because Hiro would always be his dad, and anyone else was just going to have to accept that.

The man had yet to answer, and when Nathan repeated what he had asked, the man mumbled something like, "…'m 'er... —friend."

          "What?"

          "I'm her lover," he said, meeting Nathan's eyes, truth smoothing the lines on his face. Nathan gave the statement just a moment to sink in, and then the incredulous outrage bubbled up.

He reached out and seized a fistful of the man's shirt, who grabbed his wrist out of reflex, it seemed. "I don't believe you," Nathan told him, and put a hand to his own chest to teleport. The power he had stolen from Hiro Nakamura all those years ago surged familiar through his hand, and the image of the apartment he had visited once with Noah, Claire's apartment and their destination, was clear in his mind.

* * *

 

Hours later, when Claire had explained things, Nathan felt less like the man had pulled the wool over his mother's eyes, he begrudgingly accepted all he had heard as the truth. It wasn't easy for her; she kept having to stop to collect herself and keep from crying, unable to a couple of times, to be comforted by the serial killer.

          “Can you tell Malina, too?” Nathan asked, speaking only to Claire. The look on her face, just before she looked at her lover, was a brief flash of fear. Or something akin to it. Nathan backpedaled, not wanting to upset her more than she was already, “I can do it, if you want, but I think she should know. Once I have, maybe you can just confirm it?”

          “Are you sure we can’t just keep this between us?” asked the dark haired man. Nathan leveled him with a look that didn’t invite him to ask another question like that. Claire heaved a sigh.

          “Malina is too smart not to figure it out eventually,” Nathan explained, voice softened for his biological mother. It would be inevitable, and Claire had to admit that. Reluctantly, Claire nodded, green eyes rimmed with red, "She is."

          "I'll go get her," Nathan said, waiting just a moment--waiting for Claire to tell him not to--before pressing a hand to his chest and vanishing with a pop. He turned up inside Angela Petrelli's in Odessa, on the other side of Malina's door, and knocked. She called an answer right away, the two of them getting more comfortable to random visits. She told him that the door was open, and when Nathan opened it, she turned to face him from her chair at her desk. A smile and a wave were his greeting, Malina in too good of a mood to pick up on his right away. Sitting heavily on her bed stole her attention away from her very likely Advanced Placement homework. Within ten minutes, he had explained what had happened that day.

          "Take me to her," Malina told her twin. Her expression was hard to read, some emotion that Nathan wasn't used to seeing on her face. She extended her arm to him, and Nathan obliged. They appeared in the living room in the apartment Nathan had left not too long before, and obviously startled the two adults waiting there. It looked like they had been in an embrace, still yet more comfort for Claire. With a wild cry, Malina used her wind powers to knock the dark haired man--their mother's boyfriend--away from the blonde in his arms. He landed on his back on the other side of kitchen, having crashed into the glass-faced cabinets. Nathan jumped to get in Malina's way; he didn't want to set their combined power off, so he was limited to just getting in her way. It wasn't a good idea to let her continue to beat up the man who brought Claire back to life, or demolish the apartment they were in.

The twins' biological mother had rushed to go to the man in the kitchen, the teenagers watching her carelessly tread on broken glass to get to her lover. Not that she needed to worry; the man had either healed already or was never damaged by the push. "Why did you do that?" Nathan questioned, his sister's eyes falling on his face without really seeing him. She swung away from him, not facing any of the other three. Nathan saw Claire helping the man to his feet, and the expression on the man's face: he looked totally resigned to whatever else Malina would throw at him. "He's a liar, Claire," Malina burst, although Nathan couldn't quite follow her train of thought, "And a stalker!"

          "Wait a minute," Claire hissed back, "You think I just trusted him?! You think this happened without me remembering every bad moment, every death he caused?" She was across the kitchen, rounding on Nathan's twin. Despite being the shortest person in the room, Claire was making both of them feel so much smaller. "I get it. I'm still too young to take seriously. I missed your entire lives, and you have about as much respect for me as I would if I was in your place. But I am doing my best." Claire's already emotional voice broke. Malina's shoulders sagged, her ire deflating. "I'm doing my best and he's the _only_  thing that helps." She punctuated her words with a hand pointed at the man in the kitchen, who's dark brows pulled together. His voice sounded off in the kitchen: "Claire..." he began, but he sounded so unsure, "...Malina and Nathan, I... I'd do anything to show the two of you how I've changed... I need time, though, and I hope you'll both attempt to give me a little, but I understand if you would rather I not be around when you see Claire."

Nathan caught the look on Claire's face from the side, caught her softly call the man, "Sy," and then the man was saying, "Sleep on it. Everything is a little too fresh. Go home, both of you. We'll wait on your answer."

When Nathan left Malina at her room at Angela's, she didn't speak.

When he arrived at his home, emotionally exhausted, Anne asked what happened to getting milk. All he could do was sigh.

* * *

Three weeks after uncovering the truth about Sylar, Nathan felt like he had a grasp on who the man was, and why his biological mother was with him. Gabriel Gray and Sylar; two names for one man, and yet neither of them truly fit him anymore. Claire hardly ever called him anything other than Sy, something Nathan had picked up on. Claire, herself, was settling into a routine with Nathan and Sylar, having time to talk when Nathan got out of school or off of work and on weekends. Anne cooked a dinner for the four of them twice in that time. Claire and Sylar--looking again like Nathan's "father"--would appear at the ice cream shop. Emily and Brad asked about the two, and to try and explain, Nathan decided to call Claire his cousin and the man her boyfriend. Emily, in the privacy of her room in her house, in the dead of night, asked if he was lying about the young blonde woman. Nathan knew it would be hard to understand, but he admitted the truth all the same. Her response was to say "Wow," and they went back to touching, to kissing, to the reason they were in bed together in the middle of the night.

Malina wasn't around much unless it was just her and Claire and her twin. She still seemed to be holding something against Sylar, though Nathan wasn't sure what that "something" was. He had a feeling that Malina didn't know either. He wouldn't push her on the issue, though. Maybe Angela had told her stories about who Sylar used to be. At least Malina hadn't revealed the truth to anyone else... yet.

* * *

 

Claire and Sylar were making dinner, Nathan watching them work from a stool at the kitchen island, and when the pair of them bumped together there was a spill. It was so innocuous, how it all happened, but Nathan watched Sylar apologize, absently put a hand to his chest, and pop to his side to get the roll of paper towels on the kitchen island and then pop back to where he had been cooking with Claire.

Slack-jawed, both Claire and Nathan stared at the man who was ripping a few towels from the roll to clean up with. He didn't pay them any mind until almost a full minute later, having gone back to preparing the food. His dark eyes flicked to Claire and then to Nathan, "What? Did I get something on me?"

There was a simultaneous slow shaking of heads without them severing their staring.

          "Then why are you both looking at me like that?"

          "Y-you just used... how did you do that?" Nathan stuttered, unable to form a more coherent thought. Claire clarified her son's question with: "The paper towels, Sy. They were over there."

Sylar looked at the towel roll on the counter next to him, then at the empty counter space beside of Nathan. There was an almost blink that was the only life on his face, and the room was silent for what felt like an eternity.

          "I've been able to..." Sylar trailed, backpedaling to the beginning as if he rethought how to phrase it, "I've been able to use Nathan's power for about a week now..."

Nathan couldn't even compute the phrase. But Claire understood what he had said and pressed him for more information. "Why didn't you say anything when you worked it out?"

          "Because... because I didn't... well, I don't know."

          "Wait. Explain how it is that you copied my power without opening up my head?" Nathan demanded, not having the whole story. He specifically remembered that the top of Claire's head had to come off for Sylar to get her power.

One story of an Elle Bishop--dead by Sylar's hand--and how he acquired her electrokinesis later, Nathan understood. They'd finished making dinner and were eating and talking between bites. "So, did you get my exact power? I don't have the exact same as my dad." He watched a phantasm of emotion flicker through the shadows of Sylar's face, but when the man answered, Nathan didn't hear it in his voice. "As far as I can tell, yes. Hiro's power was different."

          "How many powers do you even have now?"

Sylar looked uncomfortable as he likely knew the answer but didn't give it. Claire deftly changed the subject, and eventually there were laughs and good feelings all around. Nathan left having hugged Claire tightly and wishing them a good night. He went to see Emily in a better mood than he had been the last few times.

* * *

 

          "When was the last time you saw Hiro?" Sylar asked Nathan gently, the conversation having been heading in that direction for more than ten minutes, like a car crash in slow motion. The teen let out a heavy sigh, eyes not meeting the dark pair watching his profile in the fading light. They had been testing the ability they shared, although it was more of an exercise for Nathan, and had landed in Yosemite, taking their respite at the Tunnel View vista overlook.

          "It was June 23rd. Noah came to find me, but a man named Harris followed him to our house. Dad wanted to give us a chance to escape, but I wish he hadn't. There was plenty of time for us all to escape," Nathan explained, pausing as his mind took a tangent on how much time there had been between sending Anne off and saying goodbye to Hiro. "I think Dad thought it was his destiny to die there."

They lapsed into silence for a minute, before Sylar said, "He was a good man. I couldn't appreciate that when he was here." Feeling heat behind his eyes, Nathan glanced at Sylar, replying, "He was." The silence returned, but there was comfort there, too.

* * *

 

Nathan was at home with Anne when the doorbell rang. It was odd to hear it late in the evening. The sun had set maybe two hours before. Imagining it might be Claire and Sylar, Nathan was quick to open the door. There was certainly no preparing him for who was on the other side. A familiar beaming smile was all he could see.

          "Dad?"

**Author's Note:**

> Щ(･｀ω´･Щ) BWAHAHA


End file.
